Why do I write? Because I can't not. Simply put, that's it. I get up every day, put on a pot of espresso, (which, currently features three scoops of Haagen Daz ice cream, a habit that I began during the pandemic, and I haven't seen any reason to break). Then, I go to my writing area, which used to be your standard desk, then became a standing one, and is currently, a bed. Not the one I sleep in, the other one, (insomnia rules). I make myself comfortable, and prop up my laptop on my lap, and I sit there, hoping for inspiration, but while I do I write seventeen versions of the same sentence. Eventually, something kicks in, and then the next few pages of my new mystery take shape.
Hours pass. That's the best part. Hours where I'm not me, worrying about whatever I'm worrying about at the moment. Though, crucially, if I'm eating at home, it's important to break after an hour or so, and check in with my better half, who's the cook, so we can discuss the most crucial decision of the day. What's for dinner. Once that's settled, it's back to work.
After that, it's back to my current quandary, what happens next, and what do these people say to each other that will be maybe witty, or pithy, or at least entertaining and move the plot forward. The mystery I'm writing currently is about a mother and daughter who've kept secrets from each other. Then, all hell breaks loose on the film set where the daughter's working, and they need to team up. What happens next? That's the quandary.
I wish I outlined. I've tried and failed. Instead, I exercise. First, I take a walk, (currently in Greenwood Cemetery, which is the location I'm using for my new mystery, and blocks from my house). It's got great birding, and insane looking mausoleums, and Boss Tweed and Basquiat's graves. It's very quiet, lots of dead people, but very few living ones. So, my whirring mind eventually comes up with the germs of the next idea. Then, I jot it down, and head to the pool where I swim a mile and hammer out the details.
After which, there's a drink, and dinner.
Then, it's time to watch something, (Riot Women was a favorite recently, so now I'm exploring everything Sally Wainwright's written), and then, I read whatever it is I'm currently reading. I just finished Whistler, Ann Padgett's latest, (highly recommended), and am now reading Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke for my book group. Then, to sleep. And being a woman of a certain age, I'm up again at three, to worry some more, but eventually I get back to sleep, and wake at six or so, and then, there's coffee to look forward to, which is, in my humble opinion, the ambrosia of the gods.
It's a life, folks. And it's what makes me happy. Or, at least, keeps me sane.
We all write about ourselves in one way or another, so everything I write has me in it. My current mystery, out now, Goodbye to Me, is no exception. It takes place in 1968 in a gritty, very different New York City. The main character, Freddie, who works as a bike messenger, comes home to find her foster mother, dying, and a strange man, dead in their apartment. She needs to stay one step ahead of her pursuers and solve the mystery of why her foster mother was targeted. She and her best friend/crush, Celia, race through the city I grew up in. They go from the old Times Square, where I skipped school, to haunt the arcades, to the boat basin which used to have actual houseboats that people lived on, bobbing in the, then toxic Hudson, the Museum of Modern Art where my best friend and I would go, religiously to see whatever movie was screening that Saturday, to Bloomingdales where I spotted Faye Dunaway getting into a cab, looking so beautiful it took your breath away.
Writing is life.
And, in my case, life is writing.
***
Naomi Rand is the author of the Emma Price mysteries, The One That Got Away, Stealing For A Living, and It’s Raining Men (Harper Collins) and the novel, Surviving Amelia (Bink Books). Her forthcoming novel Goodbye to Me will be published in June by Bink Books. She has stories in three great collections, Brutal and Strange: Stories Inspired by the Songs of Elvis Costello (Down and Out Press), Crime Plus Music (Three Rooms Press) and Hard Boiled Brooklyn (Bleak House Books). Her fiction and literary criticism have appeared in numerous publications including The Flexible Persona, Other Voices, Melus, Cutbank, The Florida Review, The Spirit That Moves Us Press, Invisible City, and The North Dakota Quarterly. Her personal essays have appeared in The Huffington Post and Ravishly, and she's written a book review column, numerous articles for national publications and, once, long ago, a pregnancy guide. Now she lives in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn with her husband, David. When she's not writing, swimming, or walking, she's planning her next great meal. www.naomirand.com
